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Well known for his sculptures and paintings made from materials such as bamboo, rattan and burlap sacks, Cambodian artist Sopheap Pich exhibited work at the Institut Français in Phnom Penh this year. Titled “Sopheap Pich: de l’atelier à l’oeuvre,” the exhibition featured the artist’s work alongside selections from his personal collection of art and antiques, as well as studio utensils and miscellanea such as seeds and stones that he accumulated throughout his travels and daily life. ArtAsiaPacific had the privilege of meeting with the artist to discuss his creative process and his penchant for naturally occurring forms drawn from nature.
You show with Tyler Rollins in New York, and you recently had an exhibit at H Gallery in Bangkok, but it’s been a while since you’ve had a show in Cambodia, is that correct?
Yes. My first show ever was here at the French Institute. This is my third solo exhibition with them, and the first show I’ve had in Cambodia in many years, and it may be a long time until the next one. When the director invited me to do the show, I told him that I didn’t have enough work to fill the gallery, but he looked around my studio and saw all my antiques and my art collection and said, “Lets show all this stuff!” It was quite unexpected for me, but I knew the space, and I thought, “If I have a full room of my work, a half room of my art collection, and another half room with my odds and ends in vitrines, it could be a very interesting conversation.”
For your show at the Institut Français, there are antique objects in the vitrines alongside natural objects such as seeds. Were the seeds a direct inspiration for your sculptural works?
The rounded seeds were the inspiration for the stone sculpture in the other room [Seed No. 5 (Beng) (2016)] and the big bamboo sculpture outside [Big Beng (2017)].
What kind of plant sprouts from the seed, and does it carry any significance for you?
They are seeds from the beng tree, a luxury hardwood, like rosewood or mahogany. It’s a wood that people don’t really plant anymore. It’s illegal to cut; you still find it around here occasionally. They are becoming quite rare because it takes 30 to 40 years before you can harvest it. There are lots of problems related to this, like deforestation, and people going into Thailand to steal it from the forest and getting shot, but it’s also just an extraordinary shape! Not many seeds look like that. Sometimes art doesn’t have to be gut wrenchingly philosophical: it’s just a seed. I collect seeds wherever I go, so if I collect 50 seeds, and one of them becomes a sculpture, it’s all worth it.
You replicated this form as a small stone sculpture, and as the giant bamboo sculpture out in the courtyard. Have you considered making a large one in stone, on the scale of the bamboo sculpture?
I would love to make one out of Carrara marble, or maybe stone and bronze, with the front part in stone, fitted into a bronze socket. But I enjoy working with bamboo because of its natural irregularities. With bamboo, I’m never simply repeating the exact same thing on both sides. It’s never perfectly symmetrical, so it’s a challenge to get it to sit well. It’s almost as if the material is constantly flowing down onto the floor.
In your recent show at H Gallery, there was a green painting with a scalloped, undulating surface titled Light Green Channel (2016). Was that painting inspired by the natural world?
That painting was related to a sculpture I did in my third studio here in Cambodia, which was on a lake. That lake is no longer there, they filled it in since it was not much of a lake really (just a pond full of sewage); but the rent was cheap and I was able to hire one assistant, so I slept there and made my work there. Every day, I was looking out at the water plants, which led to the creation of my sculpture Morning Glory (2011). There was also a ripple effect from the breeze on the water, and I later decided to revisit that impression, to take a section of that and make it into something, and that green painting was the result.
It seems as if the materials you use are at least as important as any external impressions which might influence your final product. Would you say that you let the process of working with your chosen materials guide your art?
Look, that’s all I have going for me. I don’t have any deep ideas, I’m just working through stuff. I’m trying to make something beautiful, something substantial. Whatever comes my way that I feel is sincere, that is mine—I keep it. Art is about evolution. It’s about continually growing, and the accumulation of knowledge, and relating to the things around you.
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